A Comic-Con Recap from a 'Pastor of the Nerds'

A Comic-Con Recap from a 'Pastor of the Nerds'

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A Comic-Con Recap from a 'Pastor of the Nerds'

Tony Kim tries to build bridges between fandom and the kingdom.

Interview by Trevor Persaud/ July 27, 2010

Everyone in pop culture seems to come through San Diego's Comic-Con these days. The annual event has grown from a gathering of dedicated comic book fans to an essential stop on the marketing hajj for any major nerd-related media. A fleet of news outlets now invade the convention annually to see exclusive previews and panel discussions covering a broad spectrum of films, television shows, video games—and, yes, comic books.

Last weekend, at least one evangelical pastor joined the press corps at Comic-Con 2010.

Tony Kim, executive pastor of Newsong Church/Irvine, gained special entrée to the event as a blogger for BabbleOn 5, the movie review site that he and a few friends from church manage. Kim, a long-time Comic-Con attendee and a self-proclaimed "Pastor of the Nerds," met some of his pop-culture heroes, such as actor Jeff Bridges (Iron Man, The Big Lebowski, etc.), actor Zachary Levi (NBC's Chuck), and Stan Lee (Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, etc.). He also participated in Morgan Super Size Me Spurlock's latest documentary project, Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan's Hope. He spoke with Christianity Today about his double life in fandom and the kingdom.

So how did things go at Comic-Con this year?

This year was phenomenal. This is my fifth year to go, and we had the largest group ever from our community go and experience it, a lot of first-timers. About 15 of us went this year; seven of them were brand-new. They all go to Newsong. I'm fortunate to be in a church that really supports a lot of the pop-culture/nerd arts sort of stuff.

Is there anything you learned about that we should be looking forward to?

Really the biggest thing that people are just starting to hear about will be the documentary that's going to be released ...

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